


Written on the Skin

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Side Benverly - Freeform, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-19 07:04:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: On the morning of his thirteenth birthday, Richie gets the words his soulmate will say to him after their first kiss on his arm. It may be a little melodramatic of him to say it's as big a problem as the murderous demon clown, but teenage emotions are rarely logical.





	1. Dirty Little Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Part one really focuses the most on Richie's friendship with Stan as well as his feelings for Eddie-- parts two and three will flesh things out with the other losers more.

_ I hate you. You are so disgusting. _

Richie stares at his arm a long moment, his breath hitching, his eyes burning. 

_ I hate you. You are so disgusting. _

Those are supposed to be the words he’ll hear his soulmate say, after their first kiss. His soulmate. Even his soulmate is going to think he’s disgusting. His… his soulmate is going to hate him. 

Is that allowed? Will his soulmate have a different, real soulmate? One that’s a girl?

Because he knows why those are the words to appear on his skin, he knows why he’s disgusting. He knows why anyone would hate him, for… for what he wants, or who he wants. 

He wears a sweatshirt the next day, and gets irritable when his friends crowd around and ask about his mark, where it is, what it says. There’s some teasing-- does it say something dirty, does she call him by someone else’s name?-- and he feels like he’s going to throw up.

He keeps it covered at all times-- when he can’t wear long sleeves over it, he bandages his arm to keep the words hidden, in gym showers, when he goes swimming. For a year and a half, it becomes just another awful part of his dirty little secret. 

His friends try not to bother him with the subject, after a while. They don’t all have such obvious locations, and he envies Bev and Bill and Eddie, who all have marks that aren’t easily seen-- even in a bathing suit, only a little edge of Bev’s is visible, and Eddie’s is entirely hidden, and Bill’s is on the bottom of his foot, which no one ever looks at anyway. His he has to take pains to hide, but what choice does he have? If they saw, they’d _ know_, they’d all realize there was something wrong with him if even his own soulmate thought...

It’s when they’re fourteen that he finally breaks down. He’s at Stan’s, and it’s only the two of them, and if it was anyone else, he thinks he wouldn’t dare, but a year and a half of having it weigh on him, of hiding it at all times, and he just wants to be able to talk to one other person. And Stan’s been his best friend longer than anyone else. 

He changes into a tee shirt to sleep in, and doesn’t hide his arm away when he goes to unroll his sleeping bag.

“Rich?”

“You can see it, if you want to.” He says, voice small and defeated, and he holds his arm out. Feels Stan take his elbow in a reassuring grip, gentle and steady, fingers dancing over the words in the dim light from the reading lamp on his nightstand. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“She won’t mean it, though.” He presses. “That’s what a soulmate is. It’s just… maybe it’s a lousy first kiss.”

Richie pushes his glasses up, scrubbing at his eyes when they start to feel wet. “What if there’s something wrong with me? And I-- and I’m alone forever?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. I mean, you _ are _ disgusting.” Stan hugs him. “But you won’t be alone forever. Mine’s pretty bad, too.”

“Really?” He sniffs. He’s seen Stan’s, but he’s never leaned in to read the cramped cursive running up his shin. 

Stan rolls up his pajama pants and holds his leg under the light from the lamp, and Richie leans in. _ I’m sorry, I know this is a bad time, I just-- I think I have food poisoning, it’s not you_, it reads. 

“Yeah, I think mine is going to barf. Maybe we’re both disgusting.” He nudges at Richie, grinning at him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t tell anyone?”

“I won’t. But-- look, it-- She won’t always hate you.”

‘She’, there’s that word again, and he can’t bring himself to correct it, though his stomach feels small and cold. If he told Stan he thought he liked boys, during a sleepover? He’d lose his friendship, and wouldn’t his parents want to know why the sleepover was called off?

It’s another year of hiding before he can even frame it as a hypothetical.

He’d been morose all week, over a couple at school discovering they were each other’s soulmates, and he and Stan are walking towards the clubhouse together, slow and plodding, when Stan tries once again to say Richie’s case isn’t hopeless just because the words on his arm sound pretty bad. 

“I mean, she… she’d have to actually like you once she gets to know you. Maybe-- maybe you’ll be playing spin the bottle and you’ll get some… popular girl who only _ thinks _ she hates you.” Stan suggests, ignoring the very low likelihood of Richie Tozier ever playing spin the bottle with any remotely popular girls. He’s swinging a stick, knocking back wispy branches and waiting for Richie to pass before he lets them snap back behind them, and normally Richie thinks there would be something comforting about that, about Stan not being too grown-up to do it, but the world is moving forward no matter how hard they hold onto the present, they’re growing up whether he likes it or not, and it’s all too much.

“Maybe my soulmate isn’t even a girl.” He blurts the words out. “Maybe-- maybe that’s what’s so disgusting about it. Maybe I’m--”

He can’t finish the sentence. He hears the stick drop, falling into the leaf litter around their feet, and he can’t bring himself to look at Stan, to see the shock and disgust on his face at the suggestion, the horror at knowing he’s slept next to and undressed in front of a gross freak like that. 

“That’s not why you’re disgusting.” Stan whispers, grabbing his hand. 

“But-- but--”

“No, I mean… you’re absolutely the grossest person I know, but… not because maybe you like boys as much as girls.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, then what are you worried about?”

_ I don’t like girls at all_, he wants to say, but the words stick in his throat, and he shrugs. 

He likes Eddie-- no, he loves Eddie. He’s known that for a couple years now… he’s only ever loved Eddie, even if it took him a while to figure out that’s what the feeling was. Other boys are cute, sure, he’s looked at a couple, enough to know that Eddie isn’t a fluke, that he’s definitely… that he’s only interested in boys. But he’s really only interested in Eddie, and Eddie can’t be his soulmate, because if someone he’s never met, someone he’ll meet outside of Derry, if they hate him, maybe it doesn’t matter, but if Eddie hated him…

If Eddie ever hated him, he’d die.

Time seems to move so fast now, and he just wants to be able to stay kids, so he doesn’t have to worry about shit like soulmates and kisses and dirty dreams where it’s Eddie’s hands on his body and the sick feeling he has every time he wakes up from one, like he’s somehow violated their friendship. He doesn’t want to be fifteen, sixteen, doesn’t want to talk about dating and college and the fucking future, when his own is so bleak and so lonely. He wants to get the fuck out of Derry, but not all the things that come with it.

And then, Eddie drops the motherfucking bombshell on him.

“Moving?” Richie screeches-- doesn’t mean to, but he’s lost all control over the pitch and volume of his voice.

“I wanted to tell you.” Eddie shrugs, and doesn’t meet his eye. They’re the only two in the clubhouse, where the losers don’t really hang out anymore-- in part because there are more options for places to hang out when you’re older, and in part because they no longer all fit so comfortably there as they used to. In part, he fears, because they’re growing up and someday they won’t all hang out together at all. But Eddie had asked him to meet there after dinner, and… and it had felt so good right up until Eddie said the word ‘moving’. “I wanted to tell you first, I guess.”

“But-- but-- she can’t do that! In the middle of the school year? She can’t-- I mean, look, I’m totally jealous you’re getting out of this shithole, but-- I mean, I just…” He wipes at his eye, hand shoved up under his glasses. “I thought we’d leave together, after high school. I guess that’s stupid, we never… planned anything like that, or-- I just thought somehow we would.”

“I’m telling the others tomorrow. We’re moving in a month.”

“I’m really-- I’m really going to miss you.” He sniffs, and then Eddie is throwing himself into his arms, burying his face against Richie’s chest, and he’s so small… he’s so small and so perfect, and why can’t Richie stop loving him so much? Why does it have to hurt so bad to have all these feelings?

“Hey, scarecrow, I think I’m gonna miss you most of all.” Eddie mumbles into his shirt, and he hates himself a little for the sob that tears its way free at that.

“Hey, if that’s a dig at my brains, fuck you very much.” He says, and his voice is too thick and wet-sounding and wavering. “Stay.”

“I can’t just not move.”

“No-- I mean-- tonight, can we just stay here?”

“My mom is going to freak. She’s going to find out I left the house and she’s going to _ freak_.” Eddie says, but it’s not ‘no’. “And I’m not sleeping on the ground, either, this is your idea so you can--”

“We can share.”

“We’re too big to share that fucking hammock, we’re not--” And Eddie’s own voice chokes off, and he holds Richie even tighter. A _ month_, a month and then who knows if they’ll ever find their way back to each other? And maybe it doesn’t matter, because Eddie will have his own life, even if Richie is destined not to, but it still hurts. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

“We can go to sleep now, and then maybe we can get you home early enough… maybe she won’t know.” Richie offers.

He settles into the hammock and motions for Eddie to join him, despite the worrying creak that accompanies him. 

“We’re too big for this…” Eddie says again, stiff as he tries to settle down against Richie’s chest.

“I think you mean _ I’m _ too big for this, Eddie-bear. You’re not too big for anything.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re _ fun-size_.” He coos.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re _ cute_.”

“I take it back, I’m going to miss you the _ least_.”

“But you told me first.” Richie says, can’t fire it back as a retort, the words come out too soft, too awed. For a brief, fierce moment, Richie is _ glad _ his soulmate will hate him, if it means he’ll never have to love anyone like this ever again. 

“Yeah.” Eddie softens. “Goodnight, Rich.”

“Night-night, sweet spaghetti.”

“Asshole.” He slides a hand under Richie’s jacket and grabs hold of his shirt. “I hate you so much.”

When Eddie tells the rest of the losers the next day, it’s Stan who notices Richie isn’t surprised. He doesn’t say anything about it, but he looks at him like he knows something. 

At least it gets them all spending more time together. If the club is going to have to break up, they’ll make the most of their last month as a group. Richie helps Eddie pack his things, though every time he’s over to help him box stuff up, he threatens sabotage. 

“Can you hold onto some stuff for me?” Eddie asks him, when they’re alone in his room. 

“What, seriously?”

“There’s not… a whole lot of room on the truck.” He shrugs. “Just like… comic books and kid shit, I-- I don’t know. I don’t want to throw them away, just…”

“Yeah, totally. Yeah.”

“Thanks. It’s… probably dumb to care about whether or not I throw away a bunch of comic books I’ve read a hundred times, just--”

“Well, I won’t throw them away.”

“Thanks, Rich.” Eddie leans his head down against Richie’s shoulder, and for a long moment they just sit like that, gazing around the room at all his things already in boxes, and the empty suitcase waiting for what little he had that he couldn’t pack yet.

It seems like the month has gone by so fast, when it’s their last day to all hang out together, and Richie feels like he’s spent the whole week on the verge of tears. There’s already a hole in his heart, and the last thing he wants is to have his broken heart on display in front of everyone like this. As everyone gathers around Eddie and talks about how much they’ll miss him, as everyone else hugs him, Richie can feel something clawing at the inside of his chest like a ravening beast desperate to get out, and so he pushes it down the only way he knows how.

“This is the worst day of my life, man.” He slings an arm around Eddie, after the others have had their turn. “I can’t believe I’m never going to see your mom again.”

“Shut up, I can’t believe you’re being such an asshole.” Eddie says, a giggle breaking through the sniffing and sighing. 

“She’s the love of my life. That’s why I’ve had to hide my arm from you all this time, I didn’t want you to see the _ filthy _ things she’s said to me.”

“Gross.” Eddie shoves at him, though not very hard-- he doesn’t really attempt to leave Richie’s hold. 

“She’s breaking my heart by leaving town. I guess tonight is my very last chance t--”

“Shut your trash mouth, trashmouth. And we’re _ driving _ tonight.”

He feels a pang at the thought that he won’t be able to slip out to Eddie’s one last time, won’t be able to crawl through his window and spend one more night with him. Eddie and his mom will already be in a motel somewhere between Derry and their new life, and this is all he gets for a goodbye.

“Then you’ll have to tell her goodbye from me. I get it, I get it, she couldn’t break things off in person.” He jokes. “I’m just too amazing.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Eddie laughs and squirms, without putting any more distance between them, and so Richie throws his other arm around him as well.

“Kiss my best girl for me, Eddie, she’s breaking my heart.” He forces a grin, and plants his lips on Eddie’s cheek, making him squeal and shove at him and only really wind up pressing close as ever. 

“You’re the _ worst_, Tozier!” He grabs Richie’s face, only to all but scream when his palm is licked. “Oh, fuck you!”

“You’re gonna _miss_ me.” He laughs as well, and for a little while, the heartache lifts and things feel almost normal. It’s just teasing and squabbling, just like always, nothing can be really wrong when he and Eddie are messing around like normal. Just the ordinary mock-wrestling, and Eddie could beep him, could actually demand to be let up when Richie uses his size to his advantage and keeps him pinned or grappled, but he never does, he just shrieks the same joking protests and insults as they struggle, as Richie attacks him with a flurry of cheek kisses that no one could take seriously-- at least, not when accompanied by constant ‘your mom’ jokes.

“Never!” Eddie kicks wildly-- or not so wildly, seeing as he very carefully misses Richie every time. 

“You’re gonna miss me more than anything else in this town.”

“You’re dreaming!”

“You’re gonna-- oh, you’re gonna be sorry you were so mean to me, you’re going to miss me so much!”

And then, Eddie twists around, and Richie doesn’t land on his cheek at all, he lands on his lips.

“I hate you.” Eddie laughs, freeing his arms and throwing them around Richie, holding him tighter than anyone’s ever held him before. “You are so disgusting.”

Richie blinks, his stomach dropping. 

“What?” Stan says.

“_Fuuuck_.” Richie groans, and Eddie freezes, his eyes widening. 

“Don’t be an idiot, Tozier.” Bill reaches forward to gently shove at his shoulder. “You’re the one kissing him all over, you don’t get to freak out over a little lip-on-lip contact.”

“Richard Tozier, I don’t _ believe _ you.” Eddie says at last, his breath hitching-- his hold on Richie just as firm. “Your filthy mouth is the reason I couldn’t show anyone my-- _ this_!”

And then he does let go, scrambles away and tugs his shirt up and his waistband down, displaying the beautifully written _ fuck _ gracing his left hipbone.

It’s a spot he finds himself itching to touch, or maybe to lick, to taste his own ineloquent word on Eddie’s smooth, pale skin. 

“You’re mad at me? Do you have any idea how much agony I’ve been in for the past three fucking years?” Richie jumps up as well, whipping off his sweatshirt to show off his own mark, and he should be mortified to have his secret out on display like this, but none of that really _ matters _ because Eddie is leaving _ tonight_. He only just got him and he’s leaving. But Eddie grabs his arm and kisses a line along the words, and by the time he’s finished, he’s in tears, and all Richie can do is hold him close.

“I couldn’t ever hate you.” He whispers, tears soaking into Richie’s tee shirt. “Not ever, not ever, not ever. I’m going to miss you so fucking much.”

“Now who has a filthy mouth?” Richie sniffles. He gently pushes Eddie back, so that he can put his sweatshirt on him. It’s too big and the sleeves are too long and he _ aches_.

“Richie…”

“Eddie.” His hand steals up under it, his thumb presses gentle over Eddie’s hip, and his other hand cradles the back of Eddie’s head.

“We’ll give you guys some privacy.” Stan says. “Bye, Eddie.”

“You know-- it’s… it’s really kinda warm to be wearing a sweatshirt.” Eddie wipes at his eyes.

“Okay, give it back, then.”

“Uh-uh, never.” He shakes his head, smile sad. “Rich--”

“No, keep it. I-- You should have… something. When you go. And I don’t need it anymore.”

“You’ll find me again, won’t you? Someday? I-- I can’t-- This can’t be goodbye. Not if you’re my soulmate.”

“Yeah. Someday… I love you. I always have. Shit, and there’s no time to even-- But I’ve always loved you, Eds, you’re the only person I ever--”

“When you call me that--”

“I know.”

“No, I-- I like it.” He admits, and Richie’s heart soars. Even if it’s destined to shatter a moment later, it soars at that. “I like everything you call me, I like the way you make me feel. Like I’m special. Like I-- Like _ we _ \-- shit, _ shit_, Richie, I love you so much.”

They kiss for a while, there in the privacy of the barrens, though they’re both crying too much for it to really be proper making out. Richie will have to face the consequences, he guesses, but Eddie won’t. If their friends think it’s disgusting, Eddie will be safe in a new town, and that’s all that matters. 

“I’ll find you again.” Richie promises, wiping at Eddie’s tears, a continuous and useless effort. “I promise. I’ll leave Derry and I’ll find you, and-- and we’ll be… we’ll find a way to be together. And I won’t let anyone mess with you, either, we-- we’ll go somewhere where it’s… where it’s more safe. San Francisco or something, and-- okay?”

Eddie nods, breath hitching.

“_Shit_.” He sobs. “It’s late, I’m late, she’s gonna _ flip_.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“I don’t want to go. I didn’t want to go _ before_.”

“It’s not forever, right? I’ll find you.” He takes Eddie’s hand, though he knows all too soon he’ll have to drop it. “And when I do… you know when you kissed my arm? I, um, I wanna do that for you.”

“You want to kiss my arm?”

“_No_, I mean…” He blushes, looking away. “_You _ know. I wanna do that for you. Like… how you did, when you kissed where my mark is.”

“_Fuck_…” Eddie whines.

“Yeah.”

“Richie, I have to _ go_, you’re not making it easy on me.”

“It’s hard on me, too. You really are cute, you know that?” He kisses his hand one last time before they have to let go of each other. “And-- and when I tease you about being so short, it’s just… I _ really _ think you’re cute, and I like being bigger than you. Like… I don’t know. Like it makes me feel like I could take care of you or something. Even if you don’t need it.”

It’s excruciating to admit to, but when he dares another glance, Eddie is smiling. 

“You can take care of me.” He whispers. “In a couple years… you’ll come find me? We’ll go off together?”

“Yeah. Fuck, I wish we had _ time_. I-- I carved our initials on the bridge… back when I thought none of this soulmate stuff was ever gonna matter to me. Would’ve been nice if I could’ve-- I dunno.”

“Rich…”

“Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb.”

“Well, _ you’re _ pretty dumb.” Eddie leans into him a moment, shoulder knocking into his arm as they walk. “I think it’s sweet.”

Every so often, their hands brush as they sing at their sides. Every so often, they exchange little looks and secret smiles. And Eddie’s mother does flip, a little, at how late he’s made them, and how it’s probably all Richie’s fault, bad influence that he is. 

Heat prickles at the back of his neck and he rubs at his arm, self-conscious, but then Eddie pulls him down into one final goodbye hug.

“Remember. I love you.” He whispers into Richie’s ear, and his lips just graze his cheek before they have to part.

Richie doesn’t even get to say it back. He waves after the departing car, even jogs to keep it in sight a little longer, and then he’s alone, cold and empty on the sidewalk.

He walks to the kissing bridge, and traces his fingertips over the carving there, and all of a sudden he’s crying. He’s crying so hard he’s ashamed of himself, not for the tears themselves-- Eddie deserves that much-- but for being out on the bridge, out in the open, when he could have saved his tears for the privacy of his bedroom.

He drags himself home, he barely eats the dinner his parents had left in the microwave for him, he cries himself to sleep. 

At least it’s a weekend. He doesn’t think he could bear school. He doesn’t think he could bear anything. His plan is to remain in bed until he’s dragged out of it.

What drags him is a pebble against his window, and he has to stifle a sob at the knowledge that it won’t be Eddie, it won’t be Eddie ever again. It’s Stan, though, and he climbs in and gathers Richie into a solid hug.

“Does everyone hate me?” Richie asks, hiding in Stan’s arms. His head feels stuffy and his stomach wants to turn itself inside out… but Stan is reassuringly _ there_, Stan had said once before that this wouldn’t… it wouldn’t make him disgusting, if he was… 

“Nobody hates you.” He promises, finger-combing Richie’s hair into some semblance of neatness. “You’re our Richie. We’d never hate you.”

“Not even if I’m a fuckin’ fairy?”

“You’re my best friend, dipshit, you really think I care about that? Nobody cares about that. It just… it just sucks you guys found out like that, right before… it just sucks you can’t enjoy it, I guess.”

“Stan?”

“Mm?”

“You’re my best friend. Thanks.”

“Any time.”


	2. Fragile Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie's life outside of Derry isn't perfect, but then, what has he got to compare it to?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (okay, so this chapter is JUST Richie, really, as he floats through the twenty-seven years between IT's wake cycle, and I'm extending this from three to four parts, which means all the others will come back into chapters three and four)

When Stan and Bev move away at the end of the school year, there’s no one left to pick up the pieces quite the same, and the ache of Eddie being gone doesn’t fade with time. When there’s only four of them, all aching for the missing half of the group, they splinter further, and as much as Richie hates it, there’s nothing he can do about it. 

And then he’s the one to leave, to finally get out of Derry, and everything’s

Blank.

Richie Tozier has no idea what his childhood was like, because he doesn’t remember most of it. He doesn’t remember his childhood friends, he doesn’t remember if he ever had a sweetheart-- though looking at his arm, he kind of guesses he never has. 

It’s too much to think about, it leaves him feeling sick and hollow, and the memories don’t come, so he pushes that down, and he pushes down the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him whenever he looks at his soulmark. 

Disgusting. That’s him. He’s disgusting. He’s _ unlovable_.

He’s something else that he doesn’t let himself think about. He doesn’t remember his dreams much-- only fitting for a boy who doesn’t remember anything else-- but he doesn’t think women feature very prominently in them. 

It’s easier not to think about that, but it leaves him with not a lot to think about. 

He doesn’t like his life very much. For a while, he hides his arm, and he doesn’t talk much, and everything feels wrong. He spends his time trying to escape the confines of his own head, throws himself into afternoons in the dark of the movie theater, watching horror movies that make him laugh-- and every once in a while, something that actually scares him-- and into rock and roll, and into hours at the arcade, though sometimes he leaves on shaky legs with his stomach twisting and he doesn’t know why. He gets good enough grades without studying, which he thinks most of his classmates would be envious of, but it just leaves him rattling around in his own empty head when there’s nothing he can apply himself to that makes much difference, when he realized he wouldn’t actually know how to study something if he tried, since he never has before. So he tries to fill the hollow in him with movies, with music, with any passing distraction that will let him stop thinking about the fact that his soulmate hates him.

Will hate him? Has hated him?

He sees a beautiful boy on a day trip into Bar Harbor, slight and slender with dark eyes, he watches him sitting in the sun with his ice cream. Seventeen? Eighteen? A boy with a serious face, with a faraway look, who doesn’t notice him watching, who scratches idly at a freckled arm and carefully turns his cone to lick at the drips evenly, before they can reach his hand, and his tongue reminds Richie of all those unremembered dreams and panic chokes him. 

He blocks out the letters down his arm with a permanent marker after that, can’t stand to look at them. Somewhere out there there’s a boy he’d be in love with, and that boy hates his _ guts_. 

Not that he can blame him, since he’d have to kiss him first. Did kiss him? 

Maybe it’s for the best he can’t remember. Sure, having a giant hole in his brain fucks him up, but at least he doesn’t have a broken heart. He thinks. 

He doesn’t talk to anyone, and then, suddenly… suddenly he’s working a shitty job and going to a shitty community college and he realizes he’s fucking sick and tired of never talking, and so he gets up at an open mic night and he takes the stage, and he just.

Starts.

Talking.

“Hey.” Richie whips his jacket off, the heat of the spotlight hitting him. “Hey, you guys all having a good time? Except for that fuckin’ asshole, right? Hey man, I had to listen to you do Wonderwall, the least you could do is stick around and let everyone else do their shit.”

The crowd laughs. He zeroes in on a girl in the front row and tosses her a wink. Short red hair, short green skirt, a brittle smile like this is her first laugh of the day. A boyfriend who isn’t having a good time, so fuck him. 

“Well _ I’m _ having a good time.” He continues. “I’m having a great time. You know, I never used to know what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t really want to go to college. My dad would love for me to go to, like… a real school, and get a fuckin… doctorate in something, but I’m thinking I should just do this. No, no, not like… professional stand-up, just open mic nights where I get on after guys who play really shitty acoustic guitar, so I can make one really cheap hack joke at their expense and then I’ll point out a girl in the front row, who’s like, really hot, and I’ll say something charming, and she’ll leave with me instead of her boyfriend…”

He grins down at the girl in the green skirt, who’s trying very hard not to laugh while her boyfriend glares daggers.

“Hey man, just joking.” He holds his hands up. “You can’t blame a guy for trying, though, right? Like, I’m not here to say something socially relevant, man. I’m not here to be political or edgy or thought-provoking. I’m barely even up here to be funny, it’s just the best vantage point to scope the hot college chicks in the crowd from. Hey, baby, how’d you like a man with a job and a car? That’s right, I’m assistant manager… at Blockbuster Video. Think about the new releases a man like this can hook you up with. I have the power to erase your late fees. Now, the car I own is not new. It is in fact the car I was conceived in, so… it’s a little weird getting busy in the backseat. It’s a little weird.”

A manager drags him off in the middle of his next bit, as he’s detailing the problems with his previous job at a video store that had a back room, because he gets a little too enthusiastic in his descriptions of said back room, but it helps solidify his persona. This crass guy who’s a little too much of a loser to get laid, but who is definitely interested in women, definitely isn’t more interested in a boy with a soft grudging laugh than he is in long-legged, red-lipped coeds. 

People like this Richie. People tell him he should do this more often. And the more he does, the more people suggest he try real comedy clubs. 

He focuses on that. He makes friends-- shallow friends, but friends just the same-- and works on his comedy, and the permanent ink slowly fades from his arm while he’s busy living his life.

He takes to wearing long sleeves again, even if it’s just something lightweight, but it’s easier than it was. And then, one night, he just lets it be. 

“I don’t know if you can see, from the front row.” He says, leaning a little heavily on the mic stand, feeling a little too sweaty but also feeling free in a way he hasn’t in a long time, or maybe ever. Maybe ever. He’s in Hollywood and he has a crappy apartment and a regular gig in a little comedy club that’s already miles above his early open mic nights. “If you don’t have my eyesight, you probably can, from right up front and center. You can read my arm, right?”

He holds it out and holds it still, and the girl laughs and accuses him of drawing it on for a gag.

“No, no, I swear, this is the real one. Honey if you want to get me naked later to double-check, all you have to do is ask. This is the real one, and for everyone who can’t see it from the cheap seats, my, uh, my soulmark says ‘I hate you. You are so disgusting’. So I’ve got that going for me. Hey, you know what that means, if you’ve been sitting through my set thinking you hate me and I’m disgusting… we might just be soulmates. Line up outside the stage door, there’s plenty of me to go around. But it’s kind of shit anyway, right? The soulmate thing? Because there’s no guarantee you’ll actually find that one special person. It’s a hypothetical, your soulmate could be on the other side of the world and you might never meet. At least, that’s what I like to tell women who are definitely too hot to sleep with me. It works sometimes, it works, you should make the argument the next time you’re trying to hit on someone out of your league. Why wait for my soulmate to hate me when I could let a different beautiful woman hate me every night? I used to think this was a bad sign for me, but now I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t just my fetish.”

The persona is intact, but there are things that verge a little too far into honesty, when he pulls the mark out. And then there are the lies, because of course he wants a soulmate. He can kid everyone but himself.

For a while, it goes _ really _ well. His gigs get better, and then he gets good enough to actually have an agent, and then his agent is trying to set him up with a guy who writes material that fits the whole Trashmouth thing, a name he’s not sure how he came up with, but it works. It came to him in a dream, he thinks, Trashmouth Tozier. It works for the raunchy, irreverent, harmless horndog he plays onstage. He could sell it, sure, but he doesn’t want to. 

At least, he doesn’t want to until he winds up saying too much, and there’s only so much of too much he can say before his career is toast.

How it happens is, there’s a boy. There’s always a boy, but he’s gotten good at ignoring them, even when they’re impish little things with sunkissed faces and dark eyes and perfect sardonic smiles that say ‘sure, you’re funny, but don’t get ahead of yourself, I’m not laughing yet’. He notices them in the audience sometimes and his heart clenches a little around a hole in his memory. 

This time, the boy works tending bar at the club, and he gets Richie alone backstage before the show. Has to go up on tiptoe to kiss him, and it’s barely anything, but it’s a lot just the same. And he opens his mouth to speak only to double over giggling.

“I can’t, sorry, I can’t.” The boy says, pointing to Richie’s arm. “I was going to fuck with you, but I can’t. I’m so sorry-- it was Stef’s dumb idea, that one of us should-- because every night you make this big deal about how shitty the soulmate thing is, but we all know what yours says, Stef thought one of us should kiss you and say it. Which is actually really shitty now that I think about it, man. We just thought you’d freak out if it was a guy.”

Richie swallows. “I’m not freaked out. No, that’s… that’s-- that’s pretty funny. I mean, it’s not soulmark fraud if it’s like… for a minute as a joke, so… it wouldn’t have been a big deal, man, forget about it. We’re cool.”

“I’m sorry. You’re actually, like… a really decent dude.” The boy slaps his arm. “Even if you’re trashy on stage, like… the girls who tend bar all say you’re solid and you probably don’t deserve this shit. Look, thanks for not making a big deal out of it.”

“Yeah, come on.” He waves a hand, snorts and rolls his eyes and tries to push down the panic. “What’s to make a big deal out of, right?”

“Hey, break a leg.”

And then the boy is gone and the crisis is not. And so halfway into his set, he abandons his carefully rehearsed jokes and he spills his _ guts_. Not about kissing boys and how he’d like to do more of it, but about the giant hole in his memory and how he doesn’t remember a fucking _ thing _ about his childhood. 

It kills, because he’s good at delivery, because he throws in some dumb Voices and some stories about how his parents had tried to deal with the whole thing back when he’d first gotten hit with memory loss, how they still cling to the idea that he’s perfectly normal and sometimes a perfectly normal teenage boy will start losing giant chunks of his mental faculties, and how he’s fine because after a while it stopped and he doesn’t keep losing his memories, he just has a big hole where his childhood used to be and night terrors, and he manages to make the night terrors _ hilarious _ somehow, he makes up imaginary conversations he has with the spidery demon at the foot of his bed at four in the morning.

“He’s always like… _ Open your eyes, Richie_!” He says, giving the sleep paralysis demon a broad Brooklyn accent. “And I’m lying here, frozen, snapped out of a nightmare I don’t remember-- because I can’t remember shit anyway-- just like… No. No, because I know what I’ll see if I open my eyes, motherfucker, I’ll see a spider demon sitting at the foot of my bed with his knees knocking into the ceiling. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool my twice, shame, _shame_ on you. Fool me three times… But every couple of weeks, you know, like an _ idiot_, he says _ open your eyes, Richie_, and I just do it, I don’t even think about it, I open my eyes and there’s the, you know… my sleep paralysis demon, and I start screaming, and he starts laughing at me because I’m a _ sucker, Richie, an all-day sucker_. I don’t think your sleep paralysis demon is supposed to laugh at you, man. And it’s such a stupid fucking laugh, too.”

He does the laugh, and does something weird with his arms that doesn’t really convey the awful vision he’s treated to with the night terrors, but does make everyone laugh, and then he’s got to wrap up his set and he doesn’t get through so much of what he’d rehearsed, and…

It’s too much of his real self, and he’d completely dropped all pretense of just being an asshole trying to get laid. He doesn’t like being so open. Being too much of Richie and not enough Trashmouth. 

He lets his agent hook him up with the hack writer who can’t perform his own material. It’s not so different from the stuff he was doing before he started talking about his arm-- those jokes are out, along with anything else personal. He makes it his own here and there but it’s forgettable, it’s shit, it pays the bills and it keeps the walls up between Richie Tozier and the world.

He considers tattooing a bar over the mark-- he knows some people do. Anyone whose soulmate dies young, who’s looking to remarry, it’s not uncommon. Among people who just hate the whole concept it’s gotten to be commonplace. But he can never bring himself to, so it’s long sleeves or permanent marker. 

He’s doing karaoke at a party with a bunch of people he has to pretend he likes, because he has to pretend he’s like them, when he finds himself wishing he actually used his own life for his material. It’s not funny as it’s happening, but he can tell it would be funny if he made a joke out of it. 

“Wendy.” Someone says to him, as he mops the sweat from his brow after a _ very _ emotionally fueled rendition of the Boss’ Born to Run. 

“Huh?” He fumbles around for a beer that might have been his and might have been disgusting and half-warm, but might also have been better than sobriety, if he can just find where he left it. 

“Bruce Springsteen is singing ‘Wendy’.”

“That wasn’t what I was singing?”

“No. You were singing ‘Eddie’.”

“That’s weird.” He scratches at his arm. The coffee table is littered with empty cups and he might have finished his last beer already, or maybe someone else did. “I wasn’t looking at the screen.”

“Yeah. And like… I couldn’t figure out why you thought Bruce Springsteen would be singing Born to Run to someone named Eddie?”

“Yeah, man, I don’t know what to tell you. I thought I was, um… Are you sure? Like, maybe you didn’t just mishear me? That’s really _ weird_. ‘Cause I know the song, that’s… that’s just weird. I mean, maybe it’s just loud in here?”

“Dude, maybe.” The guy says, but it’s very clear he doesn’t think he could have misheard. “It’s not a chick’s name.”

“I know Eddie’s not a chick’s name. I just think it’s weird you think I could have said it.”

And he knows if he was up in front of a crowd relaying this incident, he’d point out that he could very well have been singing ‘Eddie’, because his brain is all kinds of fucked up. Because he has big holes in his memory and sometimes he spaces out completely and couldn’t tell you what he’d said or done over the past hour, though usually he finds himself doing nothing when that happens. Only he doesn’t want to tell jokes about his shit memory or his shit brain, and he definitely won’t be telling any jokes that imply, however rightly, that he’d rather be on the run with someone named Eddie than someone named Wendy, and we all know, don’t we, that it’s not a chick’s name… 

He gets drunk in the hopes of forgetting the whole night, but somehow that’s the thing he remembers.

He’s a hack comedian, but he’s a successful hack, and sometimes when he’s flying somewhere for a tour or a talk show, he picks up a crappy horror novel in the airport and takes a weird kind of comfort in not being the only hack out there. 

Richie Tozier may not like his life all that much, but he hasn’t got anything to measure it up against. Until he does.


	3. The Only One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion doesn't go quite as he might have hoped... but it could be worse, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a short one

The call from Mike slams a few choice memories back into Richie’s skull. There are harmless ones, friends he’d had, places they’d hang out… and then there are the not-so-harmless memories. How they’d been through hell together only to be yanked apart one by one. It’s mostly a blank still, but as he prepares for an emergency return to Derry, he begins to get puzzle pieces.

Mike. He remembers Mike, what he’d looked like as a kid. How he’d been a little naive about some things, just because he was home-schooled, and how he’d been quicker than anyone Richie knew about others. Mike was _ comforting_. Mike was bookish, into history, and remembering that meant remembering Ben, who spent his free time in the library, and…

And Ben, who was _ sweet_, who was kind and imaginative and who was behind all their building projects, the clubhouse, the odd attempt at damming up the river… And Bev, who it seems like he should never have been able to forget, who took none of his bullshit and snuck cigarettes and… Bill, who they’d all looked up to-- what had they fought about? They’d fought once-- who wasn’t really taller or stronger or smarter than everybody but he was just enough of all three in a certain kind of way, or… or he was _ responsible_, and they all wanted just to crowd around him and follow him into anything. Also, he’s realizing, he’s read at least a couple of Bill’s books without knowing why he gravitated to the name. Not because he liked them-- not that he hated them, either, except the endings were usually pretty weak, but...

And Stan. _ Stan_, Stan was his best friend, how did he go his whole adult life not thinking about Stan Uris every damn day? As far as he knows, Stan is the only person he’s ever come out to. Also, his very awkward first kiss, he’s remembering that. Three days after comparing soulmarks, and Stan had said he didn’t like guys like that, but there would be worse soulmates to have, and as long as they’re both gross they might as well find out… it had been a dry peck that they’d laughed off as being like kissing your brother anyway, agreed it didn't count, and after that Richie hadn’t really kissed anyone until--

Oh.

_ Eddie_. Now that the memories are coming, the ones of Eddie come hard and fast. Of teasing and joking and wrestling like puppies, of Eddie pushing him every time he wanted to just play and be a kid, because Eddie’s mom, shit, he remembers her now, too, she’d made him the boy in the plastic bubble for no good reason and…

And that’s what he needed Richie for. To be a little bit rough with him so he could just feel normal, but to still be careful enough. Because he’d die before he ever hurt Eddie, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t grapple him into a headlock or pin him to the ground if he started shit.

Which he always did, with that cute little ‘come and get me’ smile, or the scowl he used to try and hide the fact that he was having _ fun _ and he didn’t care about winning a dumb play-fight, just about getting to do it, and the way he always laughed and flailed and squirmed and teased, and…

And how he’d felt in Richie’s arms. How it felt to know they were soulmates. 

Holy shit, he’s finally going to see his soulmate again.

If Eddie even remembers-- no. Even if he doesn’t remember now, he will. The more they all remember, he will.

The memories come faster still once he’s crossed the county line. When he passes the WELCOME TO DERRY sign, he has to pull off to the shoulder and take a few deep breaths, wave off a few cars that stop to ask if he needs a jump. He lies and tells them he got an emergency call, didn’t want to be on the road with it. 

There’s so much he remembers now, compared to the vast hole he used to have in him, when he walks into the restaurant and they’re all _ there _, and it’s funny how well he thinks he recognizes everyone for how long it’s been. Ben’s changed a lot, but even so… there’s something of him there in himself. And Eddie… the moment he sees Eddie, it’s all he can do not to run to him, to pull him into his arms. He gets the seat next to him, is ready to shove anyone he has to out of the way to claim it, but no one tries to get between them.

“Do you remember?” The words tumble out before he can try to be remotely smooth about them.

“It? I’m starting to.” Eddie nods. His hand rests on the table, and that’s when Richie sees it. The ring.

The bottom drops out of his world. He misses whatever the others are all talking about, but when the subject of marriage comes out, he tunes right back in, in time to hear Eddie confirm that it is indeed a wedding ring on his hand, that he is married.

“What, like, to a woman?” Richie says, struggling.

Eddie takes it the exact wrong way. 

Great. 

All the time he spent worried his soulmate would hate him, and… that might almost be better than Eddie being testy and snappish but not really remembering him enough to summon up hate. At least if Eddie had hated him from the start, maybe he could have gotten over him somehow, but Eddie moved on. Just… married someone. Some woman. Acts like it’s unthinkable that he would have done otherwise.

It’s not the only bad news of the night-- Stan’s in the hospital. He’ll live, his wife says, but he won’t be able to join them, and Mike tells them all _ It’s _ back, and Richie doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want to be here without Stan to turn to, in a world where a killer clown wants them all dead and Eddie doesn’t know who he is or care.

The others try to argue him down from leaving, but he can’t stay, and he can’t explain to them why, can’t be the one to bring it up, because if Eddie doesn’t remember… if Eddie doesn’t want to remember…

And then he opens his hotel room door and it’s Eddie on the other side, eyes soft and sad and serious, and Richie has no defenses.

“You want a drink?” He steps out of the doorway to let him in. 

“I think I’ve had enough. You’re really leaving in the morning?”

“I probably never should have come, so… yeah.” He considers pouring himself one, and doesn’t. Sits heavy on the bed. “There’s nothing for me in Derry. And I don’t want to get killed.”

“The Richie I remember--”

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying--”

“But you _ don’t _ remember. Not everything. And what we remember doesn’t matter, because everyone grew up. You grew up. You got married.” He can’t help the way his voice twists bitterly around the word, bile at the back of his throat. “I-- kind of grew up. I have a life.”

“Just… let me tell you something I didn’t want to tell the others.” Eddie sits beside him.

“You shouldn’t stay, either. You should go home. To your-- to your wife. I’m sure she wants you back in one piece.”

“Will you shut up about my wife? Fuck… It was fraud, okay?”

“... What?” Richie turns towards him, head spinning a little.

“It was soulmark fraud. She’s unmarked, so… There’s this recessive gene combo, it’s pretty rare, but-- but it means you might never know, and… I get it, that’s hard, but… It also means… it means faking it’s easy. My mother was dying, and… and I was in a bad place, and Myra came along, and… fuck, I should’ve known something wasn’t right, but I just wanted to not be alone. I don’t… I don’t know when she could have seen-- if she saw my shirt ride up, or-- I just needed to not be alone bad enough to believe it.”

Richie feels like the bottom is dropping out of his world all over again, only this time instead of heartbreak, what he feels is sheer protective fury on Eddie’s behalf.

“She lied to you? About something that important?”

“She… she was scared, too, of being alone. Imagine being the only person you know who doesn’t have a mark at all, seeing everyone around you find happiness, and you’re pushing forty and… I don’t think she was plotting it, I think she just realized she could make it happen. We were both in a fucked up place, Richie.”

“Still.”

“Plus… I thought it was-- I mean, shit, I don’t know what you remember about my mother, but I didn’t exactly have a great time with… being able to accept my sexuality. All the shit she piled on me, and with how bad it got as the years went on and I didn’t even try to find a girl, I really believed Myra was supposed to fix me.”

“You don’t need fixing.”

“I know. I-- I remember.” He says, barely whispers. “You. Me. That we didn’t even get a day. That we didn’t understand then, how we could never keep the promises we made.”

“Are you really playing the soulmate card to get me to stay?”

“No. I’m saying I want you to stay. And if you were leaving because you thought I didn’t love you now… I do.”

“Shit’s fucked, Eduardo.” Richie flops out onto his back. “Shit’s fucked.”

“I know.” Eddie’s hand rests over his heart. He wishes he could pull away, he can’t. “I’m getting an annulment. I won’t press charges, but… all I have to do is say I had retrograde amnesia, forgot I’d found my soulmate when I was a kid, the whole thing with my wife happened, and then you found me, and it’s no contest. I’ve… I’ve been looking into annulment before, but without my memories it wasn’t quite so open and shut. Stay. Stay with me, and then take me with you. I know we’re different people, and we’ve grown up, and it’s going to be different, but… Rich, when I look at you-- when I think of you… If you go, maybe we never find each other again.”

His hand comes up to cover Eddie’s. “You won’t come with me now?”

“We have to finish it. We have to finish It.”

“Yeah, well… guess I can’t leave my soulmate to fight a fucking clown without me. Am I still disgusting?”

“So disgusting, dude.” Eddie smiles, leaning over him. Not close enough to kiss, not nearly, but close…

“Do you still hate me?” Richie’s face crinkles up in a grin he can’t fight, just for a moment.

“With all my heart.” Eddie says, and it’s so soft, so fond, it hurts… it hurts to hear the tenderness in it and to know what he really means, even after all the years, even after forgetting.

“Hey… get up a sec.” He nods, giving Eddie’s hand a squeeze before removing it from his chest and pushing himself up. “Just-- right next to the bed’s fine, just-- get up for a second.”

Eddie doesn’t bother hiding his confusion, but he doesn’t argue, either. He stands by the bed, and his eyes bug out a little when Richie slides off the bed and onto his knees, but he doesn’t protest _ that _ . He stays there, frozen, as Richie carefully tugs the hem of his shirt up, and the waistband of his pants down, just enough to reveal the _ Fuck _ on the crest of his hip. Richie looks up to meet his eyes, waiting on a nod, and only when he gets it does he lean in to finally, finally press his lips to that spot.

He feels the way Eddie sucks in a breath, and then, Eddie’s fingers combing through his hair. He stays where he is, lets the kiss linger. 

“Okay.” He whispers. “I’ll stay.”


End file.
